Innehållsförteckning för #617 från AppleMagazine

First came the robotaxis. Then the driverless buses arrived. San Francisco has launched an autonomous shuttle service -- less than a week after California regulators approved the expansion of robotaxis despite traffic and safety concerns. The free shuttle will run daily in a fixed route called the Loop around Treasure Island, the site of a former U.S. Navy base in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The Loop makes seven stops, connecting residential neighborhoods with stores and community centers. About 2,000 people live on the island. The all-electric vehicle, which doesn’t have a driver’s seat or steering wheel, is staffed with an attendant who can drive the bus with a handheld controller if necessary. The county is offering the shuttle service as part of a grant-funded pilot program to assess…

Carlos Ghosn, the former rock star businessman who fell from grace and fled authorities smuggled in a music instrument box, is getting what his dramatic story deserves — a multi-part documentary series. “Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn” is the juicy real tale of how the auto executive went from attending red carpets as the head of both Nissan and Renault to fleeing to Lebanon with the help of a former Green Beret. “The Carlos Ghosn story is unbelievable in the sense that it’s a Shakespearean tragedy in which we have an archetypal tragic hero who everybody wants to root for but knows the train crash is coming,” said Sean McLain, a consulting producer on the Apple TV+ series and Wall Street Journal reporter. The four-part series takes a wider…

Google, Facebook, TikTok and other Big Tech companies operating in Europe are facing one of the most far-reaching efforts to clean up what people encounter online. The first phase of the European Union’s groundbreaking new digital rules will take effect this week. The Digital Services Act is part of a suite of tech-focused regulations crafted by the 27-nation bloc — long a global leader in cracking down on tech giants. The DSA, which the biggest platforms must start following, is designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that’s either illegal or violates a platform’s terms of service, such as promotion of genocide or anorexia. It also looks to protect Europeans’ fundamental rights like privacy and free speech. Some online platforms, which could face billions…

Still haven’t seen “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer”? This Sunday, you’ll be able to catch up for $4 a ticket in movie theaters nationwide. Theater owners announced Monday that the second annual National Cinema Day will be held Sunday, Aug. 27. For one day, all movies — in all formats and at all showtimes — will be $4 at participating theaters. More than 3,000 theaters are participating, which accounts for most of the cinemas in the U.S., including the leading chains AMC and Regal. It’s the second straight year theaters are trotting out the one-day event at the tail end of summer. Last year’s inaugural National Cinema Day, put on by the Cinema Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Association of Theater Owners, was judged an enormous success. An estimated 8.1…

British competition regulators opened a new investigation into Microsoft’s revamped bid to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard, representing the last major hurdle to closing one of the biggest deals in tech history. The Competition and Markets Authority said it has until Oct. 18 to decide whether to approve the deal or escalate its preliminary investigation into an in-depth review. The companies agreed earlier to extend the transaction’s deadline to that same date. Xbox maker Microsoft has been on a quest to acquire Activision, maker of the popular Call of Duty game franchise since announcing the $69 billion deal in January 2022. The companies have secured approvals from antitrust authorities covering 40 countries, including the European Union. The blockbuster deal faced pushback in the United States, but the Federal Trade…

When President Joe Biden has questions about artificial intelligence, one expert he turns to is his science adviser Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Prabhakar is helping to guide the U.S. approach to safeguarding AI technology, relying in part on cooperation from big American tech firms like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta. The India-born, Texas-raised engineer and applied physicist is coming at the problem from a career bridging work in government — including leading the Defense Department’s advanced technology research arm — and the private sector as a former Silicon Valley executive and venture capitalist. She spoke earlier this month ahead of a White House-organized test of AI systems at the DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas. The interview has been edited for…

In a world where the blend of technology and finance is redefining consumer experiences, Apple has been at the forefront. By shifting the function of the physical wallet to the iPhone, Apple has ushered in a revolutionary transition in how people manage, carry, and spend. EVERYTHING IN ONE PLACE From the launch of the Apple Wallet, Apple Pay, and, more recently, Apple Card, Apple has sought to create a solution that would replace nearly everything in your wallet. This digital transformation was not instantaneous. It took years, but today, an iPhone user can pay with ease. Indeed, through Apple Pay, transactions are just a tap away. No more fumbling with cards or counting coins. More recently, select US States now allow digital IDs and driver’s licenses, meaning there’s less worry…

Just as TV shows get canceled due to poor performance or changing customer tastes, the same happens for cars and trucks. Sluggish sales have often been the deciding factor in ending a model’s life cycle, but the industry’s shift toward electric vehicles is also becoming a major driving force. These cancellations tend to fly under the radar until it is too late for most people to try to snag a deal. But for people who don’t mind that a vehicle’s lineage is ending, these cars can make for a good value because they are more likely to be discounted or potentially become a high-value classic. To assist potential buyers, experts have highlighted the most notable models that will be phased out this year. This list is sorted by the manufacturer’s…

Before fleeing about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) south of Yellowknife by car, Agnes Grandejambe looked to social media to find out almost everything she needed to know about escaping the encroaching wildfires. Some from official government accounts. Mostly from friends and family, including an offer of help from her First Nation band. But not from news media sites. That’s because Canadian news outlets — including the only one she trusts — have been blocked on Facebook and Instagram as a result of a dispute with the national government. “People were posting how close the fires were. And we knew the highway kept opening and closing, so we said, ‘OK, we’ll just go,’” said the 65-year-old who is a longtime resident of the capital city of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Her preferred…

General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit has agreed to cut its fleet of San Francisco robotaxis in half as authorities investigate two recent crashes in the city. The state Department of Motor Vehicles asked for the reduction after a Cruise vehicle without a human driver collided with an unspecified emergency vehicle last week. “The DMV is investigating recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles in San Francisco,” the DMV said last weekend in a statement. “Cruise has agreed to a 50% reduction and will have no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night.” The development comes just over a week after California regulators allowed Cruise and Google spinoff Waymo to operate autonomous robotaxis throughout San Francisco at all hours, despite…

Kazutaka Yonekura dreams of a world where everyone will have their very own digital “clone” — an online avatar that could take on some of our work and daily tasks, such as appearing in Zoom meetings in our place. Yonekura, chief executive of Tokyo startup Alt Inc., believes it could make our lives easier and more efficient. His company is developing a digital double, an animated image that looks and talks just like its owner. The digital clone can be used, for example, by a recruiter to carry out preliminary job interviews, or by a physician to screen patients ahead of checkups. “This liberates you from all the routine (tasks) that you must do tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after that,” as he showed off his double…

Children’s advocacy groups including Fairplay and Common Sense Media are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google, saying the tech giant serves personalized ads to kids on YouTube despite federal law prohibiting the practice. The letter follows a report from The New York Times last week that found that ads on YouTube may have led to the online tracking of children. The federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, requires kid-oriented websites to get parents’ consent before collecting personal information of children under 13. In response to the Times report, Google said last week that it did not run personalized ads on children’s videos and that its ad practices fully complied with COPPA. When ads appear on children’s videos, the company told the Times, they are based on…

In 2006, a Nissan marketing executive had a truly insane idea to create a competition and an “academy” to turn gamers into race car drivers. Darren Cox saw an untapped market of potential car-buyers in Gran Turismo enthusiasts – the popular PlayStation racing simulator that first came on the market in 1997. And in the third year of the “GT Academy,” an actual star emerged in a 19-year-old British kid named Jann Mardenborough, who would go on to become a professional driver, just like he dreamed. It’s a fine and lucrative idea for a movie — an inspirational underdog story in which brands like Nissan and PlayStation, a Sony company which also owns the studio behind the movie, can take partial credit for and help underwrite. And it couldn’t come…

Travelers taking off and landing at Dulles International Airport outside the nation’s capital will soon see an array of 200,000 solar panels laid out near the runways — the largest renewable energy project ever built at a U.S. airport. Dominion Energy and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority ceremonially broke ground on the 835-acre project Tuesday. The solar farm is just a small part of a huge push by Dominion to add 16,000 megawatts of solar capacity — enough to power 4 million homes — by 2035 as it seeks to comply with a state law requiring 100% of its non-nuclear energy production to be zero emission by 2045. Rural counties in Virginia, though, are pushing back against the solar expansion, as residents complain about the loss of farmland, wrecked viewsheds…